Make Room! Make Room! (25 page)

“It’s a nutty idea,” he said out loud, but he shivered at the same time and held his hands over the smoking fire.

Things weren’t that bad. He was wearing two sweaters and an old suit jacket with pieces of inner tube sewed on to patch the elbows, warmer than anything he had ever worn before. And they ate well; he noisily sucked the ener-G broth from the spoon. Buying the Welfare cards had cost a lot of D’s but it was worth it, well worth it. They got Welfare food rations now, and even water rations so they could save their own water to sell. And he had been sniffing LSD dirt at least once a week. The world wasn’t going to come to an end for a long while yet. The hell with that, the world was all right as long as you kept your eyes open and looked out for yourself.

A jingling clank sounded outside, from one of the pieces of rusty metal hanging from the bare ribs of the ship. Anyone who tried to climb up to the cabin now had to push past these dangling obstacles and give clear warning of their approach. Since the discovery of the water they had to be wary of any others who might want to move in as occupants. Billy picked up the crowbar and walked to the door.

“I made us some food, Peter,” he said, leaning over the edge. A strange, bristle-bearded face looked up at him.

“Get down from there!” Billy shouted. The man mumbled something around the length of sharpened automobile leaf spring that he had clamped in his mouth, then hung by one hand and took out the weapon with his free hand.

“Bettyjo!” he shouted in a hoarse voice, and Billy jumped as something whizzed by his ear and crashed into the metal bulkhead behind him.

A squat woman with an immense tangle of blond hair stood among the ribs of the ship below, and Billy dodged as she hurled another lump of broken concrete at him. “Go on, Donald!” she screeched. “Get up there!”

A second man, hairy and filthy enough to be a twin to the first one, scrambled over the rusty metal and began to climb up on the other side of the ship. Billy saw the trap at once. He could brain anyone who tried to get to the strip of deck in front of the door—but only one at a time. He couldn’t guard both sides at once. While he was beating off one attacker the other would climb up behind him.

“Peter!” he shouted as loud as he could. “Peter!”

Another piece of concrete burst into dust behind him. He ran to the edge and swung his crowbar at the first man, who bent lower and let it clang against the beam above his head. The noise gave Billy an idea and he jumped back and pounded his crowbar against the metal wall of the deckhouse until the hammering boom rolled out across the shipyard. “Peter!” he shouted once more, desperately, then leaped for the other end where the second man had thrown an arm over the edge. The man withdrew it hurriedly and swung down out of range of his weapon, jeering up at him.

When Billy turned back he saw that the first man had both arms over the edge and was pulling himself up. Screaming, more afraid than angry, Billy ran at him swinging down his crowbar; it grazed the man’s head and thudded into his shoulder, knocking the auto spring out of his mouth at the same time. The man roared with rage but did not fall. Billy swung his weapon up for another blow but found himself caught roughly from behind by the second man. He couldn’t move—could scarcely breathe—as the man before him spat out fragments of teeth. Blood ran down into his beard and he gurgled as he pulled himself all the way up and began beating Billy with granite fists. Billy howled with
pain, lashed out with his feet, tried to break free, but there was no escape. The two men, laughing now, pushed him over the edge of the deck, prying at his clutching hands, sending him toward destruction on the jagged metal twenty feet below.

He was hanging by his hands as they stamped at his fingers when they suddenly jumped back. This was the first that Billy realized Peter had returned and climbed up behind him, swinging his length of pipe at the two men above. In the moment’s respite Billy transferred his grip to the skeletal side of the ship and eased his aching body toward the ground that looked impossibly far below. The invaders had occupied the ship and had the advantage now. Peter dodged a swing of the leaf spring and joined Billy in a retreat to the ground. Words penetrated and Billy realized that the woman was screaming curses, and had been for some time.

“Kill ’em both!” she shouted. “He hit me, knocked me down. Kill ’em!” She was hurling lumps of concrete again, but was so carried away by rage that none of them came close. When Peter and Billy reached the ground she waddled quickly away, calling curses over her shoulder, her mass of yellow hair flying around her head. The two men above blinked down at them, but said nothing. They had done their job. They were in possession of the ship.

“We shall leave,” Peter said, putting his arm around Billy to help him walk, using his pipe as a staff to lean upon. “They are strong and have the ship now—and the water. And they are wise enough to guard it well, at least the harlot Bettyjo is. I know her, a woman of evil who gives her body to those two so they will do what she asks. Yes, it is a sign. She is a harlot of Babylon, displacing us …”

“We have to get back in,” Billy gasped.

“… showing us that we must go to the greater harlot of Babylon, there across the river. There is no turning back.”

Billy sank to the ground, gasping for breath and trying to knead some of the pain from his fingers, while Peter calmly looked back at the ship that had been their home and fortune. Three small figures capered on the high deck and their jeers came faintly through the cold wind from the bay. Billy began to shiver.

“Come,” Peter said gently, and helped him to his feet. “There is no place to stay here, no dwelling any more. I know-where we
can get shelter in Manhattan, I have been there many times before.”

“I don’t want to go there,” Billy said, drawing back, remembering the police.

“We must. We will be safe there.”

Billy walked slowly after him. Why not? he thought; the cops would have forgotten about him a long time ago. It might be all right, specially if Peter knew some place to go. If he stayed here he would have to stay alone; the fear of that was greater than any remembered fear of the police. They would make out as long as they stuck together.

They were halfway across Manhattan Bridge before Billy realized that one of his pickets had been torn away in the fight. “Wait,” he called to Peter, then, more frightened, “wait!” as he searched through his clothing in growing panic. “They’re gone,” he finally said, leaning against the railing. “The Welfare cards. They must have got lost during the fight. Maybe you have them?”

“No, as you recall, you took them to get the water yesterday. They are not important.”

“Not important!” Billy sobbed.

They had the bridge to themselves, an aching winter alone-ness. The color of the slate-gray water below was reflected in the lowering clouds above, which were driven along by the icy wind that cut sharply through their clothes. It was too cold to stay and Billy started forward, Peter followed.

“Where are we going?” Billy asked when they came off the bridge and turned down Division Street. It seemed a little warmer here, surrounded by the shuffling crowds. He always felt better with people around.

“To the lots. There are a large number of them near the housing developments,” Peter said.

“You’re nuts, the lots are full, they always have been.”

“Not this time of year,” Peter answered, pointing to the filthy ice that filled the gutter. “Living in the lots is never easy, and this time of year it is particularly hard for the older people and invalids.”

It was only on the television screen that Billy had seen the streets of the city filled with cars. For him it was a historical—and therefore uninteresting—fact, because the lots had been there for as long as he could remember, a permanent and decaying
part of the landscape. As traffic had declined and operating automobiles became rarer, there was no longer a need for the hundreds of parking lots scattered about the city. They began to gradually fill up with abandoned cars, some hauled there by the police and others pushed in by hand. Each lot was now a small village with people living in every car because, uncomfortable as the cars were, they were still better than the street. Though each car had long since had its full quota of inhabitants, vacancies occurred in the winter when the weaker ones died.

They started to work their way through the big lot behind the Seward Park Houses, but were driven off by a gang of teen-agers armed with broken bricks and homemade knives. Walking down Madison Street, they saw that the fence around the small park next to the La Guardia Houses had been pushed down years earlier, and that the park was now filled with the rusting, wheelless remains of cars. There were no aggressive teen-agers here and the few people walking about had a shuffling, hopeless look. Smoke rose from only one of the chimneys that projected from most of the automobiles. Peter and Billy pushed their way between the cars, peering in through windshields and cracked windows, scraping clear patches in the frost when they couldn’t see in. Pale, ghostlike faces turned to look up at them or forms stirred inside as they worked their way through the lot.

“This looks like a good one,” Billy said, pointing to a hulking ancient Buick turbine sedan with its brake drums half sunk into the dirt. The windows were heavily frosted on both sides, and there was only silence from inside when they tried all the locked doors. “I wonder how they get in?” Billy said, then climbed up on the hood. There was a sliding sunroof over the front seat and it moved a little when he pushed at it. “Bring the pipe up here, this might be it,” he called down to Peter.

The cover shifted when they levered at it with the pipe, then slid back. The gray light poured down on the face and staring eyes of an old man. He had an evil-looking club clutched in one hand, a bar of some kind bound about with lengths of knotted cord that held shards of broken, pointed glass into place. He was dead.

“He must have been tough to hold on to a big car like this all by himself,” Billy said.

He was a big man and stiff with the cold and they had to work hard to get him up through the opening. They had no need for
the filthy rags bound around him, though they did take his Welfare card. Peter dragged him out to the street for the Department of Sanitation to find, while Billy waited inside the car, standing with his head out of the opening, glowering in all directions, the glass-studded club ready if anyone wanted to dispute the occupation of their new home.

“My, that does look good,” Mrs. Miles said, waiting at the end of the long counter, watching as the Welfare clerk slid the small package across the counter to Shirl. “Someone sick in your fambly?”

“Where’s the old package, lady?” the clerk complained. “You know you don’t get the new one without turning in the old. And three D’s.”

“I’m sorry,” Shirl said, taking the crumpled plastic envelope from her shopping bag and handing it to him along with the money. He grumbled something and made a check on one of his record boards. “Next,” he called out.

“Yes,” Shirl told Mrs. Miles, who was squinting at the package and shaping the words slowly with her mouth as she spelled out the printing on it. “It’s Sol, he had an accident. He shares the apartment with us and he must be over seventy. He broke his hip and can’t get out of bed! This is for him.”

“Meat flakes, that sure sounds nice,” Mrs. Miles said, handing back the package and following it with her eyes as it vanished into Shirl’s bag. “How do you cook them?”

“You can do whatever you like with them, but I make a thick soup with weedcrumbs, it’s easier to eat that way. Sol can’t sit up at all.”

“A man like that should be in the hospital, specially when he’s so old.”

“He was in the hospital, but there’s no room at all now. As soon as they found out he lived in an apartment they got in touch with Andy and made him take Sol home. Anyone who has a place they can go to has to leave. Bellevue is full up and they have been taking over whole units in Peter Cooper Village and putting in extra beds, but there still isn’t room enough.” Shirl realized that there was something different about Mrs. Miles today: this was the first time she had seen her without the little boy in tow. “How is Tommy—is he worse?”

“No better, no worse. Kwash stays the same all the time, which is okay because I keep drawing the ration.” She pointed to the plastic cup in her bag, into which had been dropped a small dollop of peanut butter. “Tommy gotta stay home-while the weather is so cold, there ain’t enough clothes for all the kids to go around, not with Winny going out to school every day. She’s smart. She’s going to finish the whole three years. I haven’t seen you at the water ration a long time now.”

“Andy goes to get it, I have to stay with Sol.”

“You’re lucky having someone sick in the house, you can get in here for a ration. It’s going to be weedcrackers and water for the rest of the city this winter, that’s for sure.”

Lucky? Shirl thought, knotting her kerchief under her chin, looking around the dark bare room of the Welfare Special Ration section. The counter divided the room in half, with the clerks and the tiers of half-empty shelves on one side, the shuffling lines of people on the other. Here were the tight-drawn faces and trembling limbs of the sick, the ones in need of special diets. Diabetics, chronic invalids, people with deficiency diseases and the numerous pregnant women. Were these the lucky ones?

“What you going to have for dinner tomorrow?” Mrs. Miles asked, peering through the dirt-filmed window, trying to see the sky outside.

“I don’t know, the same as always I guess. Why?”

“It might snow. Maybe we might have a white Thanksgiving like we used to have when I was a little girl. We’re going to have a fish, I been saving for it. Tomorrow’s Thursday, the twenty-fifth of November. Didn’t you remember?”

Shirl shook her head. “I guess not. Things have been turned upside down since Sol has been sick.”

They walked, heads lowered to escape the blast of the wind, and when they turned the corner from Ninth Avenue into Nineteenth Street, Shirl walked into someone coming in the opposite direction, jarring the woman back against the wall.