Dave at Night

  “Go, go. I didn’t come to see you.”

  Mr. Meltzer smiled at us and left.

  “Did you shmeer him again?” I asked.

  “Not this time. But he wants to stay on my good side.”

  “Where’s Bandit?”

  “He’s home. I gave him the afternoon off.” Solly opened the bag and took a smaller bag out of it. “I can’t stay long. The alrightniks are expecting me.” He opened the bag and peeked inside. “I never bring Bandit to their house. They say he’s dirty.” He held out the bag. “Do you like pistachios?”

  I took one (just to see if they were any good). The elevens started to gather. They must have guessed who Solly was. He held the bag out to Eli.

  “No thank you.”

  Solly reached into the big bag again. “You like peanuts?”

  “We save everything for tonight,” Eli said. “Put it in your suitcase, buddy. You don’t want Mr. Doo— Bloom to catch you with food.”

  Solly slipped the small bag back into the big one and gave it to me. It was nice and heavy. I put it in the suitcase.

  He pulled out his cards. “Daveleh, you want to tell your friends’ fortunes for them?”

  I shuffled the cards. “Tell for you your fortune? A quarter a card . . .” I heard gasps. “Free for buddies. Learn what the future holds. Who wants his fortune told?”

  I looked around. Eli was smiling, but most of them looked serious. A lot of boys raised their hands. I picked Danny, who sat in front of me in Mr. Cluck’s class.

  “A wise choice,” Solly said. “I can tell from the shape of your face that you have an interesting future.”

  “Who’ll cut the cards?” I said. “Ah, Eli. Good.”

  Eli knocked on the cards with his knuckles, meaning they didn’t need to be cut.

  “Thank you.” I turned a card over on my bed. The two of clubs. I whistled.

  “Mazel,” Solly said.

  “Clubs are lucky. You will only stay at the HHB for another two years.” I turned over another card. The nine of diamonds.

  Solly gasped loudly.

  “Diamonds stand for, uh, riches.” I wished I knew more about Danny. “In two years, your long-lost uncle . . .” I turned over a card. “Your long-lost Uncle Max, who’s a jack of all—”

  “I don’t have any uncles.”

  No uncles.

  Solly moaned. If he was trying to help, he wasn’t.

  “Uh, he isn’t really your uncle. He’s a friend of your family, you call him ‘uncle.’ He will die and leave you nine thousand dollars.”

  By now Danny was grinning, and so were the rest of my buddies.

  I turned over another card. The eight of hearts. “You will leave New York by boat and travel to eight countries.”

  Then, out of nowhere, I had an idea about how to gonif Moe and stop him and the other bullies from stealing our food. I’d tell everybody about it after Visiting Day was over. What a terrific idea!

  “Uh,” I went on, “you will stay in the eighth country, uh, Sheba . . .” I turned over another card. “Where you will marry the princess and have five children. That is your fortune. The cards have spoken. Does anybody else want his fortune told?”

  I told three more fortunes—Bernie’s, Louis’s, and Reuben’s—and then Mr. Doom walked in.

  “How are my good boys?” he boomed.

  I slipped the cards into Solly’s pocket. I didn’t know Mr. Doom’s opinion about card playing, and I didn’t want to find out.

  We all chimed, “Fine, sir.” “Good, sir.” “Very good, sir.” “Excellent, sir.”

  Joey’s father or uncle or whoever he was said, “Mr. Bloom, I can’t thank you enough for taking Joey.” He held his hat in his hands and kept turning the brim. I thought he was going to cry. “I don’t know what would have happened to him without the asylum.”

  “That’s what we’re here for, to give these boys a happy home. Am I right, boys?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Joey’s face was bright red.

  Solly frowned. Don’t let him say anything, I prayed. Don’t let him be a gonif with Mr. Doom.

  The old lady with the twins said, “Excuse me, excuse me.” She waved her cane at Mr. Doom.

  Fred said in a low voice, which I could hear because of the silence, “It’s all right, Grandma. We get plenty to eat.”

  She ignored them. “Mister, Jeffrey and Frederick are skin and bones. Are you feeding these boys? They’re so—”

  “What did you have for lunch today, boys?”

  “Stew, sir,” Jeff and Fred chanted.

  “And what was in the stew?”

  “Meat, sir.”

  “And potatoes, sir.”

  “Did you have enough to eat?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Madam, these are active boys. We have a superlative program of physical exercise here at the HHB. Our boys get healthy food and lots of it. I was active too as a boy, and I couldn’t keep flesh on my bones either.” He rumbled. I think he was chuckling. “And see how big and strong I am now.” The rumble stopped. “But I’ll tell you what. These youngsters will share my dinner tonight. How does that sound, madam?”

  The twins’ grandma smelled a rat. “You don’t have to do that, mister. All they need is enough to eat.”

  “And tonight I’ll make sure they get it. Good afternoon, madam.” He left.

  Poor Jeff and Fred!

  “So, boychik, your superintendent is a paskudnyak, a nogoodnik.”

  I nodded. I liked the word. “A real pass . . . passgoo—”

  “Paskudnyak.”

  “Paskudnyak.”

  “I have to go, Daveleh. I’ll tell Bandit you’re in good health.” He patted me on the head and left.

  I went back to my letter. “Every Sunday there’s a chess tournament.” I stopped writing.

  It was crazy. Mr. Doom was supposed to take care of all of us. Mr. Meltzer was supposed to take care of the elevens, and Mr. Cluck was supposed to teach us. None of them did what he was supposed to. When Papa died, Ida was supposed to take care of me. Or one of the relatives should have. But Solly wasn’t supposed to do anything. When he saw me grab that dollar outside the rent party he could have ignored me and gone inside. Or he could have taken the money for himself. But he’d taken care of me instead—in a gonif kind of way. He’d even spent a lot of money on me. It was crazy.

  “This is your lucky day, Dave.” It was Mr. Meltzer again. I looked up and there were Aunt Lily and Aunt Sarah. “First your—”

  “Aunt Sarah! Aunt Lily!” I yelled, so they wouldn’t hear him say “grandpa.” Nobody comes for weeks, and now I’m up to my eyeballs in real relatives and fake ones.

  They looked surprised that I was so glad to see them. They hugged me.

  “Let me look at you,” Aunt Lily said. She was carrying a brown paper bag, not as big as Solly’s. “You look healthy.” She saw Mr. Meltzer standing nearby, smiling goofily. “What are you waiting for?”

  He stopped smiling. “Nothing.” He left.

  “He was hoping you’d give him money,” I said.

  “He should be ashamed,” Aunt Sarah said, “taking money from poor people.”

  “We would have come sooner,” Aunt Lily said, “but we’ve been busy. Fanny is worse.”

  Aunt Fanny had bad arthritis. “That’s okay,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting anybody.”

  Aunt Sarah turned a little red. “I don’t know how many times I thought about you. I’m always saying, ‘Lily, how do you think Dave is?’ Aren’t I, Lily?”

  She nodded. “We got three nice long letters from Gideon.”

  Gideon the Good.

  “He says you don’t write to him,” Sarah said. “You should write to your brother. He worries about you. He loves you.”

  Aunt Lily looked around. “Nice room. So big. Nice big windows. I wish we had windows like this, don’t you, Sarah?”

  Aunt Sarah nodded. “It’s like a palace.” She rubbed her hands together for
warmth. “And it’s not overheated. That’s good. You can get pneumonia living in an overheated place.”

  “I bet you get meat every day,” Aunt Lily said.

  I shrugged. Meat gristle every day.

  Aunt Lily went on. “And—”

  Aunt Sarah interrupted. “And you never have to stand on line to go to the toilet. And there must be indoor showers with hot . . .”

  They went on praising the HHB, convincing themselves it was a swell place. I thought of telling them about Mr. Doom and Papa’s carving and the food stealing and Mr. Cluck. But I didn’t. I didn’t need Aunt Sarah and Aunt Lily when I had Irma Lee’s basement.

  “Here, Dave.” Aunt Lily held the bag out to me.

  I peeked inside. Two apples and a dozen or so of Aunt Sarah’s butter cookies. My mouth watered, but I didn’t eat anything. “Thanks. I’ll put it away. We all share tonight.” I opened my suitcase just enough to get the bag in so they wouldn’t see Solly’s bag. “Thanks for coming.” I sounded like Gideon.

  “You sound so grown up,” Aunt Lily said.

  “I sent a letter to your Uncle Jack,” Aunt Sarah said. “I told him he should take you. I told him it was terrible to break up a family. But now that I see how nice it is here . . .”

  “What do you do all day?” Aunt Lily asked.

  I left out the bad stuff, so there wasn’t much to say. Then I thought of Mr. Hillinger, and I told them about him and the gesture drawing lesson. They laughed at the idea of his sister standing on a desk to pose.

  They told me that Cousin Melvin had found a job as a clerk, and Ida was sewing in a dress factory and boarding with a family on Rivington Street. Then they ran out of things to say too.

  We looked at each other for a few seconds. Then I said, “Thanks again for the food.” And Aunt Lily said they had to leave. “We have to cook supper.” They hugged me again.

  “Be good,” Aunt Sarah said. “Don’t get in trouble.”

  Right.

  Chapter 29

  AT FOUR-THIRTY the bell rang and the visitors left. As soon as their grandma was gone, the twins rushed to me for advice about their dinner with Mr. Doom.

  “Don’t do anything to make him mad,” I said. “If he tells nasty lies about your family, don’t argue.” Then I told them to go for his spectacles if he started beating them. “But remember, he has a spare pair in his desk.”

  When the bell rang for dinner, Mr. Meltzer told the twins to come with him. They each ran. But Mr. Meltzer’s arms snaked out. He got Jeff by the arm and Fred by his shirt collar.

  We had extra recess time after dinner on Sundays. Mike and I played hit-the-penny in the courtyard. The rules are, you put a penny on the ground and each person walks an equal distance away from it. Then you try to hit the penny with a ball, and you keep track. Whoever gets to twenty-one first wins and keeps the penny.

  After I beat Mike twice, we played tag with our buddies. It was fun, but I kept worrying about Fred and Jeff, and I finally left the game. The twins weren’t in our room, but Eli and Harvey were there. Eli was reading, and Harvey was looking out the window.

  “Did the twins come back?” I asked.

  Eli shook his head. Harvey didn’t say anything.

  “I’m going to the nurse,” I said. “They might be there.”

  Eli came with me.

  “How long have you lived here?” I asked him in the hall.

  “I came when I was seven.”

  “Did you ever try to run away?”

  “Uh-uh.” He pointed at his teeth, with the wires on them. “They’re straightening my teeth.”

  “You’re staying for your teeth?”

  “Not only that. In the summer they send us to camp, which is fun. Much better than here. And Mr. Cluck is the only bad teacher I’ve had. Last year we had Mr. Silver, and he was really good.”

  I didn’t care about teachers except for Mr. Hillinger. Upstairs, the door to the infirmary was shut. When we got close, I heard a man’s voice, not Mr. Doom’s rumble.

  I knocked. A nurse opened the door—not my nurse, a stranger.

  I glimpsed a doctor’s bag, part of a man’s back bent over someone on the cot. And Jeff, sitting on a chair, looking pale, but healthy.

  “Can you tell us how the twins are?” Eli asked, sounding just right for talking to a grown-up.

  “They’ll live.” She slammed the door.

  Inside, one of them screamed.

  When Eli and I got back to our room, Harvey was still at the window. “How’re the twins?” he asked.

  The bell rang. Recess was over.

  Eli shrugged. “Jeff looked all right. We saw him for a second. The doctor was there.”

  The other elevens started coming in. Mr. Meltzer sat down at his table. I went to him. He’d brought in a new photograph of his wife and daughters. What kind of papa could he be?

  “What happened to Fred and Jeff?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer right away, but he finally said, “Jeff is fine. Fred fell and broke his arm.”

  Fell-shmell! Mr. Doom broke Fred’s arm. It would be a twig in Mr. Doom’s big, meaty hands.

  After the lights went out we always waited before sharing the treats. We wanted the prefect on guard duty to think we were asleep. About five minutes after lights-out I had to go to the toilet. And that’s when I made my lovely discovery. There was no prefect in the hall.

  When I got back to our room I told everybody. They got out of bed immediately.

  “Congratulations,” Eli said. “They’ve stopped worrying about you. It’s Mr. Drucker’s turn tonight. He must be playing poker right this minute.”

  “I bet Mr. Meltzer told them about the shmeer,” Mike said, bouncing on his bed. “They want to stay on your good side, Dave.”

  This was wonderful. I’d be able to sneak out once I got the carving.

  We piled our treats on Mr. Meltzer’s table. Eli sat in the chair, while the rest of us stood in the narrow aisles or sat on the nearest beds. I stood near Eli, and Mike stood next to me.

  Eli held up a salami. “Harvey, buddy,” he said, “I need your knife.”

  “Good thing I have it.” I saw a glint of silver.

  Eli sliced off a chunk of salami. “For Fred and Jeff.” He put the chunk down on Mr. Meltzer’s table. Then he cut a slice. “Take one thin slice.” He passed the salami and knife to Danny.

  I peeled off my slice when it was my turn. Salami has so much flavor. I sucked on my piece instead of chewing it.

  For once I had goodies to share. Out of Solly’s brown bag came raisins, sucking candy, a big soft pretzel with lots of salt, and a banana. Plus the nuts. Plus the cookies and the two apples from Aunt Sarah and Aunt Lily.

  “Whole orphans don’t always have it so bad,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Harvey said. “If you’re a whole, at least you know where your mama is.”

  I should have known his mother hadn’t come, because he’d skipped recess.

  After the food was gone, we wandered away to our beds. As I drifted off to sleep, I remembered my idea for stopping the bullies from stealing our food, and then I was out, asleep.

  I heard a noise, and half woke up, but I rolled over and fell back to sleep.

  And then—it could have been an hour later or a minute—somebody hissed, “Psst, Dave. Wake up.”

  I sat up, wide awake, scared.

  It was Jeff. “Here.” He held something up. “It was in Mr. Doom’s desk.”

  I reached out, and Jeff put a key into my hand.

  Chapter 30

  THE KEY WAS on a ring along with a flat metal disk. “How’s Fred?” I whispered.

  “He broke his arm. They took him to the hospital to put a cast on it.”

  “How’s Fred?” Eli asked, coming toward us. Everyone was waking up and crowding around my bed.

  “He broke his arm,” Jeff said.

  I wondered if he broke it getting the key. “What happened?”

  “Mr. Doom lied about sharing his
dinner. There was no food. When we got to his office he started talking. At first he didn’t make any sense. He said something about, uh, ‘culture’ and his wife liking to read about high society. Then—”

  “He talked that way to me too,” I said. I guess he started every beating the same way.

  “Then he said how much it costs to feed us. We remembered what you said and we didn’t argue.” Jeff sat on the edge of my bed. “But he got madder and madder anyway. He kept talking softly, but you could tell.” Jeff stopped.

  “How?” Mike asked.

  “He started smacking his yardstick into the palm of his hand.”

  “Oy vay,” Joey said.

  Jeff went on. “He said it was easy for lazy yentas like our grandma to complain. Smack, smack with the yardstick.” Jeff turned to me. “I was thinking about running when Fred raced for the door.”

  “Then what?” Harvey said.

  “Mr. Doom is fast. Fred wouldn’t have gotten out of the office if I hadn’t yelled, ‘Bully! Pig! Stinker!’”

  Even in the dark, I saw that Jeff was grinning. And I heard it in his voice.

  “It was the best I could think of. Anyway, Mr. Doom turned, and Fred got out, and Mr. Doom went after him. That’s when I thought of your carving, buddy.”

  Buddy. He sure was.

  “I went to the knickknack cabinet but it was locked, like you said. So I ran to his desk, and a key was there, right in front. I started towards the cabinet to see if the key opened it, but then Fred hollered, and I ran out to help him. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. Thanks, buddy.” I shook his hand.

  “Then what happened?” Eli asked.

  “Joey’s papa came in.”

  “My papa?”

  “Yeah. Fred was running up the stairs to the balcony. I didn’t see this part. He told me about it. He said he wasn’t thinking straight or he would have stayed by the wall, not the banister, because all Mr. Doom had to do was reach through and grab him. Fred pulled away hard and he fell. He put out his hand to catch himself, and that’s how he broke his arm.”

  “What did my papa do?”

  Jeff didn’t answer for a few seconds, and I realized he was crying. “Mr. Doom didn’t care that Fred was screaming. He stood over him, hitting him with the yardstick and yelling, ‘Teach you . . . Teach you . . .’ And then your papa came in.” Jeff choked out a laugh. “The second the door started to open, Mr. Doom was hugging Fred and asking him if he was hurt and telling him to be brave.”