Dave at Night

  Dirt was quieter than concrete, though.

  I kept going. I passed the kitchen. The furnace. The coal chute.

  The worst part would be going by Ed’s room. I prayed for his door to be closed. Standing in the shadow of the furnace, I peeked out. It was open.

  I inched forward, holding my breath, till I heard the most beautiful music—Ed was snoring. I walked a little faster.

  Big sinks on my right, wringers on my left, clotheslines overhead. Mud squished between my toes—ick!—and there was a sucking noise whenever I took a step. I slowed down. There. That was quieter.

  Mr. Meltzer had probably returned to our room by now. This minute he could be discovering I wasn’t there. I kept on.

  Now the ground felt drier. There was the supply closet. I padded to it and turned the doorknob, slowly, slowly. It turned! It wasn’t locked! I guess they didn’t think anyone would raid it in the middle of the night with Ed only a few feet away.

  I eased the door open. Don’t squeak! Don’t creak! As soon as the opening was wide enough, I slipped in.

  It was too dark to see anything. Slowly, I stretched my arms out in front of me. Nothing. Air. I turned to my right and reached out. My hand touched something cold—metal—a bucket. I felt around next to it—something long, heavy—a crowbar.

  It would take me weeks to find a rope in the dark, if there was a rope. I waved my arms gently over my head, taking tiny steps farther into the closet. And then I felt what I was hoping for, a light cord. I eased the door shut and pulled the cord.

  The click sounded as loud as a cannon. I stopped breathing. I didn’t hear anything from outside.

  Shelves went all the way up to the ceiling. There was a ladder, a stepladder, a cardboard box full of tools on the lowest shelf, paint and paintbrushes on the shelf above, lightbulbs—lots of stuff. And at my feet, a big coil of rope. Thick rope, strong enough to hold my weight.

  I heard something. Slish. Slish. Very soft. I reached for the light cord, missed it, got it, clicked out the light. Slish slish. Then the sucking noise. Someone was crossing the laundry.

  I was trapped.

  The sucking sound stopped and the slish slish started again. He was past the laundry. But why slish slish? Shoes wouldn’t sound that way, but slippers might. Probably it was Ed, going to the toilet or prowling around because he’d heard a noise. My mind screamed at him, The toilet! The toilet! Go to the toilet!

  He did. The slish slish passed the supply closet. A few minutes later, the toilet flushed, and I heard him again, coming close.

  He stopped. Why?

  “Sadie Lou was my first love.

  How I loved that Sadie Lou.”

  He was singing!

  There was an echo. It made his voice sound round and full.

  The song said he met Sadie Lou when they were seven, and it was love at first sight. But she was rich and he was poor, so her parents sent her to a school far away.

  “Annabelle was my next love.

  How I loved my Annabelle.”

  War came, and Annabelle wasn’t true.

  “Jeanne Marie was my new love.

  How I loved that Jeanne Marie.”

  But the war ended, and he came home, leaving her behind. I wished he’d stop falling in love. There was Bessie May, who married his best friend, and Rosalie, who married him, but ran away with his brother, and Mary Ann, who died in his arms. And more. Three ladies died in the song.

  I was going to get caught because of The Song That Went On Forever.

  Finally he found Sadie Lou again. He must have been at least two hundred years old, after all the girlfriends and wives he’d had. Anyway, they were happy together.

  “Sadie Lou was my first love.

  How I love that Sadie Lou.”

  He stopped singing.

  Go back to bed. Go back to sleep.

  He started the Hanukkah song, “Rock of Ages.” Was he going to sing till the milkman came? I couldn’t do anything. The rope was right here, but I couldn’t take it and go. I started counting out minutes to see how much time was going by, but I lost track.

  He finished. I heard slish slish again, and then sucking noises as he crossed the laundry. Then silence.

  How long should I wait for him to fall asleep? I started counting again, and this time I didn’t let myself lose count. After ten minutes I pulled the light cord again and stood still to listen.

  I didn’t hear anything, so I started wrapping the rope around my chest, under my pajama top. There was much too much. I had to cut it. I measured out the right length. There was a saw way down in the toolbox, with a hundred things on top of it. One by one, I took out the screwdriver, the hammer, several clamps, a wrench, and put them on the ground.

  The chisel slipped out of my clammy fingers and landed in the dirt with a dull thud. I held my breath. Nothing happened.

  I lifted out a pair of pliers and a drill, and there was the saw. But sawing the rope was going to make noise. Too much noise.

  This was ridiculous. I’d taken the chance of leaving our room. I’d gotten all the way down here. Found the rope. Found the saw to cut the rope. And now I had to go back without it. Mr. Meltzer was going to catch me. He’d take me to Mr. Doom, who’d kill me, and I’d have gotten nothing out of it. I wanted to punch something, but instead I started to unwrap the rope from around my chest.

  Bong. Bong.

  The clock. Noise! I picked up the saw, fumbled with the rope. On the fifth bong I started sawing. The rope was tough. Bong. Bong. I was halfway through. Bong. Let it be midnight. Bong. Bong. The saw caught on a matted spot. Bong. Bong. It was through! I made it!

  I put the saw back in its box and placed everything else on top of it. I wound the rope around my chest again. I was done. The coil on the floor didn’t even look much smaller. I clicked off the light, edged the door open, and glided toward the laundry. Between slow, muddy steps, I stopped to listen. Ed was snoring again.

  I eased the door to the stairs open. Silence. No Mr. Meltzer pounding up and down, hollering what he’d do when he laid his hands on me. So, since I’d been lucky so far, I decided to go outside and try out the rope. Why not? Mr. Meltzer could catch me now, or later, after I’d had another adventure.

  But when I reached the first floor, I heard voices in the lobby. A woman was trying to dump a boy here. A prefect’s voice echoed down the hall. “No admissions at night.” The voice became friendlier. “But for a few bucks—”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “I’m not getting into hot water for nothing. Sorry, lady.”

  She started yelling, “I can’t go back . . .”

  I eased the door open a crack. The kid she was trying to get rid of couldn’t have been older than three. He was sitting on the floor, sucking his thumb.

  “You can holler . . .”

  I let the door close and waited a few minutes, but the argument went on. I started upstairs. On the second floor, I stood in front of the stairway door, too scared to open it. There was no keyhole to look through. I lay down and peered under the door. And there were Mr. Meltzer’s feet, outside our room.

  Why weren’t they running around, looking for me?

  Maybe he was waiting for me to come back. He was probably sitting there, grinning over what Mr. Doom was going to do to me.

  It wasn’t even one o’clock. He’d have to go to the toilet sometime. If I could get back in while he was in there . . . If I was in bed when the wake-up bell rang, he’d be confused. He wouldn’t be sure I ever left. It would drive him crazy.

  I waited, stretched out on the cold floor, the chill seeping into me. If the other prefect, the one in the lobby, took this staircase, he’d catch me. But there was no other choice.

  The three o’clock chimes woke me. I didn’t know how I could have been such a moron, to let myself sleep. Mr. Meltzer’s feet were still outside our door, but he could have gone to the toilet seven times while I slept.

  I tried to think of a way to make him get
up, a way to make a noise he’d have to investigate that was nowhere near me. If I was a ventriloquist I could throw my voice to the other end of the hall.

  Alfie started coughing. Mr. Meltzer’s feet didn’t move. Alfie stopped, then started again. Mr. Meltzer’s feet went into our room.

  Take Alfie to the nurse! Take him!

  He came out with Alfie. Good. He started coming my way. Toward this staircase! Toward me!

  I raced downstairs. I passed the first floor and went down half a flight more. Mr. Meltzer’s footsteps marching upstairs sounded like a one-man army. I didn’t hear Alfie at all. Boom boom boom boom boom. Then silence. I rushed upstairs and dashed into our room.

  Somebody was in my bed! Harvey, fast asleep. He’d saved me! I went to his bed. Somebody was sleeping there too!

  Then I looked closer, and the sleeper turned out to be a mound of clothing. I went back to my bed and shoved the rope into my suitcase. Then I ran to Harvey’s bed.

  Eli was sitting up. “Why didn’t you tell us you were going?”

  “I thought everybody was asleep.” Which was true, but the real truth was, it never occurred to me to ask for help.

  “You could wake us. You know we always help a buddy.”

  Chapter 20

  IN THE MORNING I asked Harvey how he’d known I’d left.

  “We watch out for each other, buddy,” he said, which wasn’t an answer.

  Mike said he had heard me leave. “I knew Mr. Meltzer would check on you,” he said while pulling on his earlobe. “So I woke Eli, and he told Harvey to take your place.”

  “I’m the right height,” Harvey said.

  I thanked them. Harvey could have been dragged to Mr. Doom along with me.

  “Any time,” Harvey said.

  “Where’d you go?” Mike asked.

  “Just to the basement.” I told them about it. When I got to the part about the woman in the lobby, none of them thought she was dumping the kid.

  “It could have been for his own good,” Harvey said.

  “Yeah,” Eli said. “We don’t know why she brought him.”

  “Probably he was bad,” Harvey said.

  How bad could he be? He wasn’t more than three.

  “Or maybe she was sick,” Alfie said.

  She was dumping him. Nothing was wrong with her.

  “Or he was sick,” Fred said. “And she knew we had a nurse.”

  “This is the last place to go if you’re sick,” Jeff, his twin, said. “You’d freeze to death.”

  Nobody said anything for a minute.

  “If you go outside again,” Mike said, “could you bring back some food?”

  There’d be food at Irma Lee’s party. I told them about it, and said I didn’t know how I could go with the prefects watching me so closely. Harvey said he’d pretend to be me again if I got out.

  “I’ll cough till Mr. Meltzer comes and takes me to the nurse,” Alfie said.

  “Can you cough whenever you want to?” I asked. Maybe it wasn’t consumption.

  “Usually I cough because I have to.” He smiled. “But I guess I could just do it, buddy.”

  But Alfie wasn’t able to help me. He had a real coughing fit during supper, and Mr. Meltzer took him to the nurse and didn’t bring him back. Then, while we were getting ready for bed, Mr. Meltzer started packing Alfie’s clothes and schoolbooks into his suitcase.

  “Alfie died,” Mike said. He was yanking on his pajama bottoms, which were twisted and backwards.

  Mr. Meltzer didn’t say anything. Finally Eli asked, “What happened to Alfie?”

  “They’re sending him to another place. Fresh air, wholesome diet. He’ll come back when he’s better.”

  “If he’s better,” Harvey said.

  “He’ll die,” Mike said, too soft for anybody but me to hear.

  “Where is he?” Eli said. “We want to say good-bye.”

  “You can’t. He’s outside, in the doctor’s car.”

  Eli put his pajama top on quickly. “We’re going to tell him good-bye.”

  We all rushed to finish putting on our pajamas. I was ready, so I helped Mike get his pajama legs straightened out.

  Forty boys—all of us elevens—marched through the HHB, followed by Mr. Meltzer, who yelled at us to go back to our room. We passed a couple of other prefects, who just stared.

  As we walked, Mike kept saying that Alfie might not die if he was somewhere else, somewhere better than the HHB. I didn’t know. My friend Morty had died of consumption, but some people got well.

  The doctor’s Model T was parked outside the gate. Alfie was going to get a lot of fresh air on the way to the fresh air place, because the buggy didn’t have a top. He was in the backseat, and the nurse was tucking a blanket around him. When he saw us, he poked an arm out of the blanket to wave. He didn’t look any worse than usual, and he wasn’t even coughing. I wished we could grab him and bring him back upstairs. How did we know they were really taking him to a place that could make him better? Places like that had to be expensive, and I didn’t think anybody would spend much on an orphan.

  “The doctor says they have horseback riding upstate, where I’m going. But I may not—” He started coughing.

  The nurse closed the door, and the car drove away. Alfie waved and coughed while we yelled good-bye and hollered that he was getting a good deal, that those horses better watch out, and that he should get fat and bring food back for the rest of us.

  Later, in bed, I thought about Papa and Alfie mixed up together. I thought about how people seemed to vanish when they died. It felt as though Papa had disappeared, even though I saw him go into the ground. And now Alfie had vanished, even though he hadn’t died. Not yet, anyway. Alfie was a whole, like me, and nobody ever came to see him on Visiting Day either. He didn’t have any brothers or sisters to miss him if he died, not even a deserting rat of a brother. Well, we’d miss him. His buddies would miss him.

  Then I got mad at myself for thinking of him as already dead when he’d probably be back in a few weeks with roses in his cheeks.

  I rolled over and tried to fall asleep. I felt so tired, like my bones were turning to icy jelly. If Papa’s carving had been sitting on the floor five feet away from my bed I wouldn’t have been able to stand up and get it.

  And then I remembered Irma Lee’s party. I had forgotten about it in the commotion over Alfie. Well, I couldn’t go. I couldn’t get out with Mr. Meltzer on duty, and I didn’t feel like trying. I was sorry I couldn’t tell her why I couldn’t come. But I wasn’t sorry I couldn’t go. The last thing I wanted was a party.

  The lump in my throat was the size of an orange. I wished I could cry, but I couldn’t. It was too cold to cry anyway. My tears would freeze. I stared down at the tiled floor. I hated everything. Mike was making a racket in the next bed, and I hated him for being so noisy. I hated Danny for snoring. I hated Alfie for leaving. I hated Papa for dying. I hated myself for being an orphan, for being cold, for not being able to fall asleep.

  The next thing I knew, somebody was shaking me awake. I opened my eyes. It was Mr. Meltzer.

  I was terrified. There’d been a telegram. Gideon was dead. I could tell from the breathing around me that my buddies were awake. Mike was unusually still.

  “What?” I whispered.

  “Get dressed.”

  I was right. It was a telegram.

  I had trouble getting my knickers on. Finally I was dressed. I followed Mr. Meltzer out.

  Solly and Bandit were in the hall.

  “Tell for you your fortune?” the parrot squawked.

  Chapter 21

  SOLLY EXPLAINED AS we walked toward Convent Avenue. It was cold out, just like it was in. But I was warm because Mr. Meltzer had given me somebody’s winter coat and somebody’s cap to wear.

  The air was crisp and fresh. I wanted to run or skip, but Solly didn’t walk very fast. He said he had told Mr. Meltzer he was my grandpa. “I said your cousin had just gotten married, and they wanted yo
u at the party. I could see I had to shmeer him, so I slipped him a dollar. The nebbish almost kissed me. From him I could have gotten you out for a quarter.”

  A dollar! I walked along, thinking about it. He’d spent a lot on me at the rent party too, paying for me to get in and giving me a dollar at the end. “How did you find me?” I asked, trying to understand.

  “You think I can’t learn what an HHB is, boychik?”

  The parrot squawked, “Boychik!”

  Solly was the nicest grown-up I’d run into in a long time. He knew how much I wanted to go to Irma Lee’s party, so, when I didn’t show up where we were supposed to meet, he came and got me. “Thanks,” I said and repeated, “Thanks.”

  “Think nothing of it.”

  It was swell, being out and not having to worry about getting caught. Mr. Meltzer would be waiting for us at five-thirty. Solly said it was twelve-thirty now, so we had hours.

  “Do you have any real grandchildren?” Maybe I reminded him of a dead son or grandson.

  “My son, the alrightnik, has three little alrightniks. A girl and two boys. One boy wants to be a banker. The other boy wants to own a factory. My granddaughter, Heloise—what kind of a name is Heloise?—wants a pearl necklace for her birthday. Nine years old, and she wants pearls.”

  They didn’t sound like kids who’d help their grandpa be a gonif. “I’m going to run away from the HHB,” I announced.

  “Tonight? I promised that nebbish—”

  “Not tonight. After I do something.”

  We were going around Saint Nicholas Park. That was the name of the park I’d gone through before, when I went to the rent party. Solly was afraid he’d trip and fall if we walked through it.

  I took a deep breath. “Could I stay with you after I run away?”

  “You think this is a good idea, bubeleh?”

  “I could help you. I could groan. You said—”

  “You could help me. I’m an old man. I could use a little help. But they’d never let me adopt you. An old—”