Tunes for Bears to Dance To (2 page)

T
he morning after the cast was removed from his leg, Henry followed the old man when he left the crazy house.

He was pleased that his knee didn’t bother him as he walked along behind the old man. He had winced at the sight of his leg, pale and a bit shriveled, when the cast came off at the doctor’s office. But he walked normally enough as he followed the old man in his erratic progress through the streets.

If the old man was not crazy, he was certainly strange. His lips moved as if he was carrying on a conversation with an invisible companion. Once in a while he stopped walking and stood silently, staring at nothing in particular, caught in a sudden trance. Then he tipped his black cap, a kind of beret but with a visor, and resumed walking. He tipped his cap several times although there was never anyone to tip his hat to.

For an old man he walked fast. Henry had to be alert because he took unexpected shortcuts through alleys and backyards. Henry’s leg began to weaken, as if it was hollow inside, and he limped a bit but was able to keep the old man in sight most of the time.

Finally they arrived at a section of town Henry had never visited before. Old ruined buildings leaned against each other as if for support. Down the street young guys hung out in front of a barroom matching coins they tossed in the air. The old man stopped at a store that appeared to be vacant. The windows were painted black and there was no sign above the big front window where a sign should be. The old man put down his black bag and leaned against the window frame, as if catching his breath. Then he tipped his cap again, picked up the black bag, and knocked at the door. He disappeared inside as the door opened.

Henry rubbed his chin and kicked at a tin can on the sidewalk. Curiosity itched him, like a mosquito bite. He saw the guys in front of the barroom staring at him, suspending their game with the coins. Noting a narrow alley next to the vacant store, Henry cautiously made his way toward it, then dashed into the alley. He emerged at the far end into a bleak landscape of sagging fire escapes, overflowing rubbish barrels, and abandoned furniture, like debris from a shipwreck. A gray rat squirted between two piles of old wooden crates.

A newly painted red door drew his attention, no doubt the back door to the store the old man had entered. Stealthily, feeling like an actor in a Saturday-afternoon movie serial, Henry advanced toward the door and tried the handle. Gently but firmly. The door did not open.

After glancing around to see if he was being observed or if the barroom guys had followed him, Henry leaned over and looked in the keyhole. A foolish action, of course, sensible in a movie but ridiculous in real life. As expected, he saw nothing.

Suddenly, the door swung open and Henry almost fell on his behind, his jaw dropping in surprise as a huge man, a giant of a man, appeared in the doorway.

“What’re you doing here?” the giant bellowed, his voice like the wind of at hurricane.

Henry could not speak, helpless before the giant.

“What’re you snooping around for?” the giant demanded, stepping forward. Which made Henry scurry backward, causing him to trip this time and fall to his knees. He winced as pain shot through his healed kneecap and he wondered,
Have I broken it again?

The giant towered above him, suffocatingly, his bare arms bulging with musclesr his legs like tree trunks.

The pain in Henry’s knee went away, leaving
the hollowness. He was dismayed to find his cheeks wet with tears.

“Hey, I’m not going to hurt you,” the giant said, his voice suddenly gentle. “Did you hurt yourself when you fell down?”

Henry shook his head as he got to his feet, wiping at the tears on his face.

“You want to see what’s going on inside?” the giant asked. “Is that it?”

Henry tried to shake his head but couldn’t move a muscle. He wanted nothing to do with this giant, gentle voice or not. What if he was crazy like the old man?

“I didn’t mean to scare you, boy,” the giant said, a sad smile revealing big jagged teeth. “But we have trouble here with some of the neighborhood wise guys. …”

Scrambling to his feet, Henry looked up into the giant’s eyes for a moment—soft brown eyes that were full of regret—then tore himself away, stumbling, the giant’s voice trailing behind him as he ran for the alley:

“Wait … don’t go….”

But Henry kept going, grateful that his bad leg was strong and sturdy again as he ran through the alley.

Later, making his way home, he was sorry that he had not gone into the store. He wondered if he would ever find out what the old man was doing inside the place or what his black bag contained.

M
r. Hairston merely grunted when Henry reported to the store without his crutches, ready for work, that afternoon, Henry had scrubbed his face and combed his hair. His leg still felt strong despite his long run home that morning.

“Potatoes to put up,” Mr. Hairston called over the shoulder of a customer, and Henry made his way down to the cellar, where a bin of potatoes awaited him. He always tried to hurry the job because the cellar was dark and damp and he often heard rats scurrying across the floor. One day, a gray rat squirmed out of a bag of potatoes and Henry had leapt with fright, his heart exploding in his chest. He was afraid of a lot of things—the closet door that never stayed closed in his bedroom, spooky movies about vampires—but most of all, the rats.

When he came back upstairs, Mr. Hairston was saying good-bye to a customer Henry recognized as Mrs. Pierce, who lived on the first floor of his three-decker. Smiling and nodding, Mr. Hairston led her to the door and closed it softly after her.

“Disgusting, the wart on her chin, hairs growing out of it,” he said, returning to the register, a sneer replacing the smile. Actually, his smile was not really a smile—just as his laughing was not really laughing—but a mere rearrangement of his lips, his usual sneer turned inside out.

Henry was amazed at how politely Mr. Hairston treated his customers, smiling and bowing and eager to please when they were in the store, and how insulting he was when they were gone.

“The customer’s always right,” he proclaimed one day, as if he could read Henry’s mind. “But only in the store. When buying. Otherwise, they’re only people. Stupid, most of them. Don’t even know a bargain when they see one. So, why give them a bargain?” He handed Henry a Baby Ruth bar, which astounded the boy because Mr. Hairston had never before given him a treat. “Eat,” he said. Then: “It was nice with the customers during the war, though. Rationing. People came running if they heard I got butter in. Or cigarettes.”

Henry listened, his cheeks bulging with the candy while Mr. Hairston looked off, as if he were talking to himself, his voice almost dreamy. “I’d make them line up. Make them wait, acting like the
stuff hadn’t arrived yet but was expected any minute. All the time the order was here and they waited in line. I was like a dictator, the way they treated me. I was a dictator, Because I had control over them.” Then looking down as if discovering Henry’s presence after having forgotten him there, he said, ”Go to work. I don’t pay you to hang around doing nothing.”

Just before closing time, while Henry was sweeping the floor, Mr. Hairston’s daughter came into the store. She appeared at the back door, having descended from the tenement above, where Mr. Haifston lived with his wife, whom Henry had never seen, and the girl, whose name was Doris. Doris was a whisper of a girl, slender, with long black curls that reached her shoulders, a bow in her hair. It looked like always the same bow but the colors were different, red and yellow and blue, bright and vivid colors in contrast with her pale white face, the dark eyes deep in their sockets, like the windows of a haunted house.

She usually came and went like a ghost, appearing suddenly and then fading away, a door closing softly behind her or the rustle of her clothing faint in the air. Sometimes he didn’t see her at all but sensed her presence somewhere in the store. She was a year ahead of him in school and when they met in the corridor she lowered her eyes and looked away. She always carried library books in her arms. In the store he sometimes felt those haunted eyes upon him,
turned and almost saw her, then heard the back door closing softly. They had never spoken a word to each other.

Whenever Mr. Hairston saw her in the store, he ordered her to leave. “Upstairs,” he commanded, his hand pointed to the ceiling.

That afternoon the girl spoke to Henry for the first time, a brief word: “Hello.” So brief and whispered that at first he doubted his ears. She didn’t smile at him but her expression changed, or rather an expression of some kind filled the usual blankness of her face. He could not read that expression. As she turned away before he could return her greeting—if it
had
been a greeting—he noticed a bruise on her cheek, purple and ugly.

“What happened to your cheek?” he asked, whispering for some reason.

“Upstairs.”

Mr. Hairston’s voice was like thunder in the quiet store and Henry leapt with surprise as he turned to confront the store owner, whose face was dark with anger.

Henry began to sweep furiously and heard the girl’s footsteps fading, the door opening and closing.

“She fell down,” Mr. Hairston said while Henry swept the same spot over and over. “Clumsy girl, always hurting herself.”

A late customer entered the store and Mr. Hairston turned away, cursing beneath his breath. He hated last-minute customers.

That night Henry added Doris to his prayers as he knelt beside his bed. He said his prayers every night as the nuns at St. Jude’s Parochial School back in Frenchtown had taught all the students to do. He prayed first for his mother, small and delicate who had worked the night shift during the war, coming home at dawn, white with fatigue, trying to sleep in the noises of the day. Now she was a waitress, standing on her feet all day and carrying heavy trays. He then prayed for his father, deep in his silence. He prayed that his father would begin to gamble again, even if gambling was the reason there was never enough money in the house. His father, too, worked in the wartime shops but gambled away his earnings most of the time, a hard-luck gambler willing to bet on a ball game or a horse race or on the cards in his hands but seldom winning. Now his father didn’t gamble anymore and Henry prayed for him to come out of his grief even if it meant gambling again and losing as usual.

He also prayed for Eddie, in case he was not in heaven. But where else could he be? Certainly not hell. Eddie had never done anything to deserve hell. Purgatory? Maybe. The nuns had often spoken of that place where souls waited to be admitted into heaven. Souls got into heaven from purgatory if enough prayers were offered on their behalf. So, Henry prayed for Eddie’s soul, taking no chances that he might not yet have reached heaven, hoping to nudge him closer each night.

“And deliver us from evil,” he murmured. “Amen.”

Before making the sign of the cross, ending his prayer, he thought of Doris who was clumsy and fell down a lot and hurt herself. He prayed to keep her safe from harm. Then he added a prayer for the old man, asking Jesus to watch over him. Anyone who lived in a crazy house certainly deserved a prayer.

T
he next day, Henry followed the old man again, more curious about his actions now —the way he tipped his hat, his changes of expression, his sudden trances—than his destination.

Turning a corner, he was startled to find that the old man was nowhere to be seen, as if he had disappeared from the face of the earth.

Suddenly he stepped out of the shadows of a doorway, his black bag clutched to his chest for protection, his hands trembling as they held the bag, his eyes wide with fright.

Blushing furiously, Henry said, “Don’t be afraid.” He had never seen such fright in someone’s eyes.

The old man hacked away, cringing now, as if expecting a blow.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Henry said, gentling his voice, wondering if the old man understood what he was saying. “I’m only eleven years old….”

Perhaps his words or the regret in his voice took some of the fear away, because the old man halted his backward steps and relaxed his grip on the bag. Big tears filled his eyes now and spilled onto his cheeks, dampening the white moustache.