Searching for Candlestick Park (10 page)

“That isn’t the same as hearing your voice. You could have been forced to write a letter.”

“If I call, she’ll come after me. She’ll make me go home.”

“You don’t need to tell her where you are. Just tell her you’re all right.”

“What if she has the call traced?”

“We’ll call from a pay phone.”

I shook my head again. “Mama could still find out the town.”

“I’ll pay for the call, so there won’t be an operator involved.”

I hesitated. Even if Mama traced the call to Grafton, it would take awhile for her to get here, and she wouldn’t know where to find me once she arrived. And I was leaving in the morning.

“It’s homemade spaghetti sauce,” Hank said.

The polenta was delicious. Foxey thought so, too.

After we ate and did the dishes, I walked beside Hank to the pay phone downtown.

While he dropped quarters in the slot, he said, “You only get three minutes, so talk fast.”

Aunt May answered the phone. When I said, “Hello, Aunt May,” she screamed. I’ll probably be deaf in my right ear for the rest of my life, the way she shrieked into the receiver. Then, without so much as a hello or how are you, she yelled, “Leona! It’s him!”

I held the receiver away from my head in case Aunt May decided to shriek something else but instead she said, “Where are you?”

“Hollywood,” I lied.

“No, you aren’t,” Aunt May said. “There’s no way you could get all the way to Hollywood so soon unless you sprouted angel wings and I highly doubt a sneaky boy who steals money from his aunt, and disappears
for days on end, and scares his poor mama out of her wits, is about to sprout any angel wings.”

Mama came on the phone then. “Spencer? Spencer, is it really you?”

“It’s me, Mama,” I said. “I called to tell you everything is fine.”

“Everything is
NOT
fine,” Mama said. “How can everything be fine when I don’t know if my only child is alive or not? For all I know, you’re lying dead in a gutter somewhere.”

“I’m not in a gutter,” I said. “If I was dead, I would not be able to dial a telephone.”

“Where are you?”

“Hollywood.”

“Already? How did you get there so soon?”

“I hitchhiked.”

“Hitchhiked!” Mama’s voice was nearly as shrill as Aunt May’s had been. I winced and held the phone farther from my ear. “You know better than to hitchhike. You take your life in your hands when you hitch a ride. Anyone could pick you up. Anyone! You don’t know who’s behind the wheel of a car these days. It could be an ax murderer. The minute you get in that car, he could pull out his ax and split your skull in two. The last thing you’ll see on this Earth is your own brains spilling out across some stranger’s steering wheel.”

“Nobody split my skull, Mama. I’m okay and Foxey’s okay, too.”

“You still have that fool cat with you?”

That question surprised me. Of course I still had Foxey. Why did she think I left?

“I thought he would run off before you got six blocks from home,” Mama said.

“Well, he didn’t.”

Hank tapped his wristwatch and I knew the three minutes were nearly over.

“I have to go now, Mama,” I said.

“Go?” she cried. “Go where?”

“Back to my friend’s house.”

“What friend? Who are you staying with?”

“Good-bye, Mama.”

“Wait!” Mama said. “I’ll pay for the call. I have to write down your number so I can . . .”

An operator interrupted. “If you wish to continue your call, please deposit another two dol-”

I hung up. I didn’t want Mama to hear how much the call had cost because if she did, she might call the phone company and they could figure out how far away I was and I wasn’t nearly far enough away to want her to know the distance.

I stood with my hand on the telephone receiver and a quivery feeling in the pit of my stomach. It had seemed strange to hear Mama’s voice. I had pretty much convinced myself that if I never saw Mama again, it would be just fine with me, after the way she treated Foxey. But somehow, standing there by the drugstore, with the cars driving by and a faint breeze
blowing, I was sorry the call didn’t last longer. It was good to hear Mama’s voice again, even though she was mad at me for running away.

“Want to call back?” Hank’s voice snapped me out of my homesickness.

“No.”

“Nothing wrong with changing your mind,” he said. “Maybe running off was the right thing to do last week. Maybe going back is the right thing to do this week.”

“I can’t take Foxey back to Aunt May’s.”

“I could probably find a good home for Foxey.”

“Foxey
has
a good home. With me.”

Hank started to say something, changed his mind, and instead went in the drugstore and ordered two chocolate ice-cream cones for us to eat on the way home.

“How come you’re being so nice to me?” I asked.

“I’m lonely. I miss having someone around to talk to. And you remind me of myself, when I was your age. You’re a thinker, like I was.”

When we got back to Hank’s house, he cut a small hole in the bottom end of a brown paper bag and put the bag on the floor. Foxey instantly went inside the bag to investigate. Then Hank tapped the outside of the bag with a pencil, right next to the small hole. Foxey’s paw shot out through the hole, feeling for the pencil. Hank tapped the other end of the bag, and Foxey did a quick
U
-turn.

Hank handed the pencil to me. “No sense spending money on expensive cat toys,” he said. “All cats love a paper bag with a hole in the bottom.”

Hank sat at his table, whittling a piece of wood. I sat on the floor, playing with Foxey. When Foxey tired of the bag-and-pencil game, Hank gave me a piece of string. I trailed it across the floor, and Foxey chased it.

“I worked all my life as a cabinetmaker,” Hank told me. “Always did like to make things out of wood. Had to retire a few years back because of a heart attack, but I still whittle a couple of hours every day.”

“Did you make those?” I asked, pointing to the carved wooden cats in various poses that lined Hank’s windowsill.

“Yes.”

“Did you copy your own cat?” I asked.

“Yep. He was a good cat. My wife named him Butter, because of his color.” Hank sighed. “Those were good days,” he said, “when Lois and Butter were still with me. But I can’t go back to the past.”

I knew exactly what he meant. There were good days in my past, too; days of story heroes named Spencer, and Saturday afternoon baseball games. But I couldn’t go back anymore than Hank could.

I
took a hot shower and went to bed early. It felt wonderful to sleep on a mattress, with a pillow under my head. I didn’t hear a thing until eight o’clock the next morning.

I found Hank in the kitchen frying hash-brown potatoes while Foxey rolled around biting his piece of string.

“You want to stick around a couple of days?” Hank asked. “Learn how to whittle?”

I was tempted. I could picture Foxey and me settling in with Hank, but I knew if I wanted to get to Candlestick Park before the baseball season ended, I couldn’t dawdle about.

After breakfast, Hank fixed some sandwiches for my
backpack. I laid them carefully on top of the boxes of cat food. Foxey was not at all happy about getting in his box but I told him there are some things in life you have to do whether you like it or not.

Hank watched as Foxey growled and struggled to get out of the box. “Last night, you said Foxey has a good home. I’m not so sure Foxey would agree.”

I looked at Hank. Foxey took advantage of my inattention and leaped out of the box. He ran behind Hank’s sofa.

“Cats aren’t meant for traveling around, meeting new situations day after day,” Hank said. “I’d bet anything that Foxey is scared half out of his fur every time he hears a dog bark, or a truck rattle past.”

I bit my lip and looked away, knowing Hank spoke the truth.

“Sometimes,” Hank said, “if you really love someone, you have to do what’s best for them, even if it isn’t what you want.”

“If I take Foxey back to Aunt May’s, I won’t be able to keep him,” I said. “I’d rather have him be scared while we travel than to go home and turn him in to the pound. He’d be terrified there, and if he didn’t get adopted in a few days, he’d be killed.”

“I’m not suggesting that you give him up. You can leave him here with me while you go on to Candlestick Park and find your dad. When you’re all settled and have a good place for Foxey, you can let me know and we’ll arrange to get him to you.”

I knew Hank was right. Foxey would be much happier here, rolling on Hank’s kitchen floor and sleeping where it’s warm and dry, than he would be shut in a box all day, sleeping where it’s cold and damp, and getting chased by strange dogs.

But it was scary to think of going on without Foxey. Even though he couldn’t possibly protect me from any danger, it was comforting to have him with me.

“The whole reason I left home was so Foxey and I could stay together,” I said. “I know you’d be good to him, but . . .”

My voice trailed away, and I swallowed hard. I couldn’t leave Foxey behind. Without Foxey, I would be all alone.

I felt Hank’s hand on my shoulder. “He’ll probably get used to being on the road,” Hank said, “especially if you keep feeding him Big Macs.”

I fished Foxey out from under the sofa and this time he accepted his fate. He went limp as I put him in the box.

Hank wrote his address and phone number on a slip of paper. “If you need help,” he said, “call me collect, any time-day or night. Or come back here, if you need a place to bunk.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for everything.”

“Promise me you’ll call if you need help.”

“I promise.”

“Safe journey,” he said.

Hank held out his hand and I shook it. When I took
my hand away, there were two twenty dollar bills in my palm.

“The Greyhound Bus office is in a health food store, just down the street from the appliance store where we watched the ball game,” he said. “The bus stops right in front, and it leaves for San Francisco at noon.”

I threw my arms around Hank and hugged him.

“I wish I had more to give you,” he said, “but it’s the end of the month. Money’s always tight then and I don’t like to dip into my savings unless it’s an emergency.”

“I’ll repay you,” I said, “as soon as I can.”

“This isn’t a loan; it’s a gift.”

He went out on the porch and watched me leave. At the corner, I looked back and waved, thinking how odd it was that a man old enough to be my grandfather had become my best friend.

BUS TICKETS
. The sign was inside the health food store, just as Hank had said. I walked to the counter.

“I’d like a ticket to San Francisco,” I said.

“One way or round trip?”

“One way. Can my bike go in with the luggage?”

“It can if it’s a collapsible bike. You can’t take your cat, though.” She pointed toward the front window.

I turned and looked. Foxey’s head stuck out between the lid and the bottom of the box, and he was trying to squeeze out. The rubber bands that secured the top
of the box to the bottom broke, and Foxey jumped to the ground.

I dashed for the door, but as soon as I was outside, I stopped. I knew if I moved too fast, Foxey might panic and run.

“Hey, big guy,” I said softly. “You don’t want to run loose around here. This is no place for a cat.” While I talked, I inched toward him.

Foxey crouched beside the bike, with his tail flapping nervously from one side to the other. His big eyes stared at me.

I kept talking, hoping to keep him calm. “I know you don’t like being cooped up in the box,” I said, “and I’m sorry you have to do it. But it’s better than being a cat pancake in the middle of the street, which is what will happen if you run away from me.”

I was only a couple of feet away, getting set to grab him, when a car pulled up to the curb directly in front of us. Foxey bolted into the alley that ran along one side of the building.

I dashed after him, and saw him go under a large trash container that was on big wheels. I knelt on the pavement and peered under the trash container. The smell of rotting garbage surrounded me.

Foxey huddled against the wall of the building. I reached under and grabbed his front leg. When I tried to pull him out, he resisted, but I dragged him out, anyway. When his head emerged, he hissed at me.

Foxey had never hissed at me before. I held him close and, in my mind, I replayed my earlier conversation with Hank.

Hank was right, I admitted. Foxey doesn’t have a good home with me, not anymore. If Foxey had a good home he would not be cowering under a garbage container in an alley, shaking with fear.

I sat on the pavement, with the garbage smell making me sick to my stomach, and felt tears trickle down my cheeks. Foxey stayed on my lap, with his face buried in my jeans. He quit trembling, but he didn’t purr.

“I love you, Foxey,” I whispered. “I love you too much to make you go any farther with me.”

After a few minutes, I wiped my face on the bottom of my T-shirt and stood up. I stuffed Foxey back into his box and put the lid on it. I held the box shut while I walked the bike back to Hank’s house.