I’d find Irma Lee, and she’d be so glad to see me.
By suppertime I was hungry, even though I ached all over and the bump on my head never stopped throbbing. I ate with the nurse. The food was better than the glop they served in the basement, and she didn’t eat any of my portion. After supper, she told me I could leave. It was six-thirty. I didn’t want to go, but I couldn’t hide out in the nurse’s office forever.
I wondered if Mr. Doom was looking for me.
I didn’t see him. Everyone I passed stared at my bandages and the bump. The elevens were in the auditorium, but I didn’t want to go there. I wanted to sleep.
Our room was empty. When I put on my pajamas I had to be careful not to rip the bandages off. In bed, I fell asleep instantly. I didn’t hear the bell ring for the end of study hall or the end of recess, and I didn’t hear the elevens come in, and I didn’t hear the bell ring for lights-out.
The first thing I heard was someone whispering, “Dave, buddy!” in my ear. Whoever it was also shook my aching shoulder.
“Watch it!” I sat up, feeling stiff.
“Shh.”
All the elevens were crowded around my bed.
“We want to know what happened, buddy.” Mike bobbed up and down.
“Tell us what Mr. Doom did to you,” somebody said. In the dark, I couldn’t tell who. Then he coughed. Alfie.
“And why Mr. Meltzer took you to him,” someone else said.
“He went out last night,” Mike said.
“So what, buddy?” The whisper was raspy. It must be that know-it-all, Harvey. “We go out.”
“He went out out. Outside.”
Why were they asking me when Mike had all the answers?
“Outside the fence?” somebody asked.
Mike snapped his fingers and cracked his knuckles. “Naturally outside the fence.”
“You know the oak tree near the fence?” I reached down to make sure the bandage was still in place on my leg. It was.
A few heads nodded. Somebody said, “Yeah.”
“You know how one of the branches reaches over the fence?”
No one said anything.
“There’s a crack in the trunk this high up . . .” I explained how I got out.
Mike said, “See? I told you.”
“Where did you go?” one of the twins asked.
“Did you go into Saint Nicholas Park?” the other one said.
“He wouldn’t,” the first twin said.
“The park by Saint Nicholas Terrace? Sure I did. Why not?”
“They found a dead body in there last year.” Mike sat on his bed and bounced.
“I saw something white on the ground,” I said, hamming it up. “It could have been a bone.”
“I think there’s poison ivy in there, buddy,” Alfie said. He coughed. Nobody said anything till he stopped.
“There were fang marks on the body,” Eli said. “They say the murderer was an enormous wolf.”
“I heard breathing,” I said, “but I thought it was the wind. And I saw these yellow eyes—”
Alfie started coughing again, and this time he didn’t stop. Everybody ran back to bed. The door opened.
“Alfie? You need the nurse?”
He went on coughing, and Mr. Meltzer said he was taking him to the nurse. Then he yelled, “When I get back, everybody better be asleep, or else!” He stopped at my bed. “Here. I saved this for you.” He dropped Solly’s tie on my pillow and left. I heard Alfie coughing all the way down the hall.
I pulled my suitcase out from under the bed and put the tie inside, where the carving should have been. So now I had my fake grandpa’s tie, but Mr. Doom had the only thing left of my real papa.
Chapter 16
I GOT BACK in bed and closed my eyes. “Why did you run away, buddy?” Mike asked. They were all around me again.
“I didn’t run away,” I said, sitting up. “He beat me up for running away, but I came back.” The cut on my neck hurt. “Anyway, do you like it here?”
“Why did you come back?” Eli asked.
Before I could answer, Harvey said, “He didn’t have any place to go. Who would take him in? He’s a whole orphan.”
“Three-quarters!” I said.
“There’s no such—”
“He wouldn’t need anybody,” Mike said, stopping the argument. “He can take care of himself.”
“Let him answer, buddy,” Eli said.
“He doesn’t—” Harvey started.
“Shh,” at least five boys said.
“Why does everybody call each other buddy?” I asked.
Lots of kids whispered at the same time, “We’re buddies, not bullies.”
“We eat together,” Mike said, “sleep together, do everything together. But we’re not brothers, so we’re buddies.”
Eli said, “We look out for each other.”
Gideon should hear about this. He might learn something. Then again, he was just a brother.
“Even if I’m a half and you’re only a whole,” Harvey said, “I’ll look out for you.”
“So tell us why you came back,” Mike said.
“Because of my papa’s carving, buddy.” I told them about it, and I told them where it was.
Somebody whistled. Somebody else said, “Oy vay!”
“You can kiss your carving good-bye, buddy,” Harvey said. “You’ll never get it back.”
“Yes I will, buddy.” He thought he knew everything. But he didn’t know me.
“How?” Mike asked eagerly.
I didn’t know yet, but I would.
“He won’t get it,” Harvey said, “because it’s impossible.”
“We’ll all work on it,” Eli said. “What did you do after you came out of the park?”
“First I saw a Pierce-Arrow—”
The lights came on. I froze. Mr. Doom had come to get me.
Everybody scattered.
It was Mr. Meltzer. “I told you to go to sleep. I’m sitting right outside the door. If I hear so much as loud breathing, you get no meals tomorrow.”
“How’s Alfie?” Eli asked.
“Just go to sleep.” Mr. Meltzer turned out the lights and slammed the door.
This time everybody stayed in bed. Even though I’d been up most of last night, I couldn’t fall asleep. The bump throbbed, and I felt like the milkman’s horse and cart had ridden over me.
I rolled onto my stomach to get more comfortable, but that was worse. I rolled back.
Solly might take me when I ran away for good. I could help him. I could feed Bandit. I could groan when he needed a groaner. I’d ask him when we met for Irma Lee’s party.
But how could I go to the party? I wouldn’t be able to get out. Mr. Meltzer would be watching me like a hawk.
In the middle of the night I woke up from a dream. I’d dreamed I was in a room with a coffin. I went up to it and saw that Papa was inside. He sat up. I said, “You’re alive!” But he said, “No, I’m dead.” And I thought, this isn’t so bad if I can still talk to him when he’s dead.
Then I woke up. My blanket had fallen off, and I was freezing, except for the bump on my head, which felt hot. I had to go to the toilet. Mr. Meltzer was right outside the door, wide awake. He escorted me to the toilet and waited till I was done.
I woke up once more before morning. Mr. Meltzer was standing over me. I sat up, scared.
“Go back to sleep,” he said. “I was just making sure you hadn’t gone anywhere.”
Alfie was waiting for us at our table when we got to breakfast. Before the bullies came, he showed us the bag of rock candy the nurse had given him. He said he’d share it at recess. And then he sat on the bag, so the bullies wouldn’t see it.
When Moe arrived and saw my bandages, he didn’t want his penny back. “It’s unlucky. Good thing I loaned it to you or I might have depended on it.”
“See, Moe,” Eli said from across the table, “good deeds pay off. If you left our food alone, you might get e
ven luckier.”
“Nah. I don’t think so.”
I left the basement surrounded by my buddies. On the stairs Mike was bobbing next to me, and Eli was right behind me. Eli said, “So what happened after you went through the park?”
“I saw—”
“Uh-oh,” Eli said softly.
I looked up. Mr. Doom stood on the landing above us. I turned to run back downstairs.
Mike caught my arm. “Don’t run,” he whispered.
“Don’t run,” Eli whispered.
“Good morning, boys,” Mr. Doom boomed.
“Good morning, sir,” everybody said. Everybody but me. I moved my lips, but nothing came out.
“Having fun with your pals, boys?”
“Yes, sir.”
He saw me and started down the steps. Boys flattened themselves against the stairway walls to let him by. There were a million boys behind me. I couldn’t run. He came closer, step by step. I fought to keep my breakfast down.
“What’s this, son?” He touched the bandage on my neck.
I jumped down a step. Didn’t he know he gave it to me? Eli and Mike were mouthing words at me. I couldn’t tell what they were saying.
Mr. Doom’s face started getting red. “Don’t you know how to answer—”
“A cut, sir. Just a cut, sir.” My voice was a squeak.
“That’s better. I hope you got it from playing, not from fighting.”
“From playing, sir.”
“Be more careful next time. I can’t have my boys hurting themselves. Now get going, or you’ll miss your studies.”
I stumbled up the stairs. Didn’t he recognize me? Was he that blind even with his glasses on? Had he beaten up so many boys that we all looked alike to him? Or was he completely nuts?
Chapter 17
WHEN WE GOT to our classroom, a man and a woman were in the front of the room, and Mr. Cluck wasn’t there at all. The woman wore trousers. I’d never seen a woman in pants before.
“Who are they?” I asked Mike.
“He’s Mr. Hillinger, the art teacher. He’s nice, but he’s crazy. I don’t know who she is.”
I hoped he was better than the art teacher who came around to our class at P.S. 42, who taught us over and over about the color wheel and showed us pictures of what famous artists painted three hundred years ago.
“Boys,” Mr. Hillinger said, “you may remember today for . . . high point of your child—of your life possibly.” He talked so fast I wondered how he breathed. And he never finished what he was saying. He rushed around the room, handing out fat black crayons and big sheets of paper, which he put on the floor next to our desks. “Today . . . draw from a model . . . Heady experience . . . Draw on the floor, because your desks aren’t big enough. Our model is the pretty young . . . in the unusual . . . She’s Miss Hillinger, my sister.”
Miss Hillinger wasn’t pretty and she wasn’t young. She had straight gray hair, a long face, and baggy cheeks. She looked a lot like Mr. Hillinger.
“. . . Wearing my best trousers, so you can see what her legs are doing when she poses.”
Mike started drawing violins in his notebook with his crayon. The twins were whispering. Harvey tapped a rhythm on the top of his desk. Eli read a book hidden in his lap. I watched Mr. Hillinger.
After he finished giving out the paper, he dug into a brown paper bag and pulled out a newspaper, which he waved at us. “Mine accident in Michigan . . . Jailbreak attempt here in . . . Houdini mourners . . . Better use for this.” He covered Mr. Cluck’s desk with newspaper. Then he put more newspaper across Mr. Cluck’s chair.
“Allow me, dear.” He helped Miss Hillinger step onto Mr. Cluck’s chair and from there onto Mr. Cluck’s desk.
Standing on a teacher’s desk had to be against every one of the six thousand and twelve rules of the HHB. Mike stopped drawing. The twins stopped whispering. A few kids giggled.
“Now, Miss Hillinger will take . . . and you will draw her. Draw her big. Don’t worry . . . Plenty of paper . . . First pose is three minutes—hurry! On the floor, all of you. Don’t bother with fingers or Miss . . . her nose or her . . . hairstyle.”
We made a lot of noise getting on the floor. My right heel knocked into the bandage on my leg. It hurt.
“Ready, my . . .” Mr. Hillinger said, while pulling his watch out of his pocket.
“Ready, Siegfried.” Miss Hillinger put her hands on her hips and twisted to her left, turning her head so she was looking away from us at the blackboard behind her.
I stared. How could I do a drawing in three minutes?
“Go!” Mr. Hillinger said. “See how she’s turned? Show the twist . . . This is gesture drawing you’re . . . It has a long and respectable . . .”
I thought of the twist in a pretzel, and I drew a spiral in the middle of the page. Then I looked at Miss Hillinger again. The folds in her blouse sort of followed the spiral I had drawn. I kind of sketched them around it. How much time had gone by? Her feet were apart, and she was leaning on the toe of her right foot. I drew in her legs. Something was wrong. It looked like she was kicking with her right foot.
“ . . . examples by Leonardo and Rem . . . And even Grosz or Picass— Stop. Time’s up . . . Now let me see . . .”
Miss Hillinger relaxed. Kids were laughing. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. She didn’t have a head. I put in a circle, which looked all wrong. Then I stopped, since I couldn’t remember exactly how she’d been standing. She didn’t have any arms in my drawing, and she had a circle for a head, and she only took up a quarter of the page. I wished he’d given us more time.
Mr. Hillinger threaded his way between the desks, stepping over our drawings. “Fine, Alfie. Harvey, interesting. I tell everyone they should see what my orphans . . . Nice and big, Eli. Mike, my sister is not a violin, although . . . Ah.” He stopped at my desk. “. . . You caught some of the gesture. Very good. What’s your name?” I saw him notice the bump on my head and my bandages.
“Dave Caros.”
“Excellent, Dave. You have the beginnings of an eye. Now, Ira, let me see . . .”
He said something about lots of drawings, but he didn’t say anybody else had an eye or the beginnings of one.
At the front of the room again, he said, “Gesture drawings. You showed the . . . what the model—Miss Hillinger—was doing. Here. Look. Perhaps I can . . .”
In front of me, Ira was trying to draw on Danny’s arm. Danny was pulling away and both of them were giggling.
“How often does he come?” I asked Mike.
“Mondays and Fridays.”
Mr. Hillinger tacked a sheet of paper to Mr. Cluck’s corkboard. “Two minutes, Louise.” He handed his watch to one of the twins. “Fred, when I say ‘go,’ start. Then say ‘stop’ when two min . . . Ready, Louise? Give me a hard one. It won’t matter if I—”
“All right, Siggy.”
Some kids snickered at the nickname, Siggy.
“Marvelous model, my . . . She has . . .”
Miss Hillinger put one hand on her hip and bent over. With the other hand she seemed to be reaching for something on the desktop—under her feet. The pose made her look like an old lady with a backache, picking something up from the floor.
“Go.” Mr. Hillinger stared at her for a moment. Then, with a single line, he drew the curve of her back and her rear end and the back edge of her trousers.
It just took him a few seconds—whoosh, and there it was. Everybody stopped talking.
“It helps if . . . anatomy, but you . . . Someday I’ll teach . . .” He used the side of the crayon to shade in the arm she’d put on her hip, which was sticking up in the air. He kept talking while he worked, but now he was talking to himself. “More shading . . . mass of hair . . . Can’t see her face . . . Now the arm—use a line . . . Vary pressure, make it interesting . . . Negative space . . .” He stopped drawing Miss Hillinger, even though she wasn’t all drawn in, and drew in the top of the desk and part of the blackboard. When he got to
the edge of the page, he kept going, drawing out onto Mr. Cluck’s corkboard. He went out a few inches and then went back to the paper. “No fingers, as I told . . . other arm goes . . . Nice pose . . .”
When Fred said, “Stop,” Mr. Hillinger was drawing in the side of the desk.
It was like magic. I was grinning, and I wanted to clap. I looked around. Lots of kids were smiling. Eli was. Fred and Jeff were. Mike was drawing violins.
“This is the gesture. Feel her trying to reach . . . And weight, she has weight. Now you . . . Turn over your paper. And remember, big. Fill your page. We want . . .”
Miss Hillinger stretched, with her arms going straight up—and she stayed that way.
I tried to think about everything he’d told us: to make her big, to get the gesture, not to worry about fingers or noses. If she was going to be big, her waist should land in the middle of the page. I started there. Her chest swelled up from her stretching. I made it round, and I used the length of my crayon to do her arms, two fat lines going straight up, and two short lines going sideways for her hands. I did her legs the same way.
“You may stop, dear,” Mr. Hillinger said.
“You made her legs too short, Dave,” Harvey said from behind me. “She looks like a dwarf.”
“He made her big, like we were supposed to,” Mike said.
I looked at Harvey’s drawing. In it, Miss Hillinger wasn’t any bigger than my fist. I looked back at mine. It was terrible, but you could tell she was stretching. I had gotten the gesture, sort of.
Mr. Hillinger didn’t come around this time. “Now you will . . . You’re going to draw Miss Hill . . . by not drawing her.”
Huh?
“You’re going to . . . the space around her, and the hole that’s left will be Miss . . . Here. Watch. I’ll show you what . . .” He went back to his drawing, which was still tacked to the corkboard. “You may . . . I forgot to draw in the front of my sister’s trousers . . .”—he drew in a line for the edge of the desk behind Miss Hillinger—“. . . and the back of her arm. You’ll notice what . . .” With the side of the crayon he shaded in the wall behind the desk and then drew another line, for the bottom of the blackboard. Then he shaded the blackboard darker than the wall. But he didn’t shade the space where Miss Hillinger’s legs and arms belonged—and they popped out, white, but solid because of the space he left for them. I didn’t know you could do that.