Monkey Island (6 page)

“Then she would go to such an agency and find you,” Calvin said. He spoke evenly, not looking at Clay. “Foster homes. They can be good and bad. At least you'd have a bed of your own and three meals a day, and you'd go to school.”

He looked up at Clay. “You must go to school,” he said. “If you don't learn a few things in this world, you'll be as empty as that can you're carrying.” Clay dropped the can on the ground. “Besides,” Calvin added, “the world will be a dull, dead place if you stay ignorant.”

Clay's attention was distracted by a movement he glimpsed on the sidewalk. A skinny dog was loping along, cringing as it looked up at the people walking around it. Clay felt awful about lost animals, the kittens set loose in the hotel corridors to starve, the dogs picked up by kids from the street, only to be abandoned or beaten. They were like babies, all the lost animals, babies who couldn't tell you how they were suffering.

Clay squatted down, facing Calvin. “If I go to a foster home,” he said, “I'll never see my mother and father again. We'll be lost from each other forever.”

“You don't know that,” the old man retorted. “None of us knows what's ahead.”

“Folks!” cried Buddy as he hurried toward them down the path.

“It's
folk
,” said Calvin dryly. “A collective noun like
sheep
or
fish
.”

“Okay. Folk,” Buddy said, laughing. “Listen to what happened to me. I was looking for my cans and I found this little shopping bag at the bottom of a trash basket. Inside it was a bunch of credit cards, a driver's license, and stuff like that. So I went to a phone and got the number from information for the name on the license. And a man answered, and I told him what I'd found. And he said his wife's purse had been snatched this morning on the subway. He couldn't thank me enough, he said. We made an arrangement, and he drove down from the Bronx over to the corner of White Street, where I was waiting. He was this elderly fellow and he looked me over and I gave him the bag and he gave me thirty-five dollars. Folk! We're going to eat tonight! I'm taking you to the diner over on Ninth Avenue. I tell you there are saints in this world!”

“There are no saints,” Calvin said ferociously.

“There's Gerald,” Buddy said. “And the ones who bring the boxes of clothing. And the ones at the church. And that old fellow giving me that money for those cards he won't be able to use anyhow. Come on, Calvin!”

Calvin said, “All right, all right … maybe there are three saints. Not more, I think.”

5   The Coffee Van

“What are you writing, Calvin?” Clay asked.

“A history of my life and times,” Calvin replied, glancing over at Clay, who had let
Robinson Crusoe
fall onto his lap.

It was early morning, a quiet time before the heavier traffic started up. Gerald had been bringing extra milk for Clay, who had begun to like it with a drop of coffee for warmth. He finished it now and put the cup inside the crate for Dimp Laughlin and his dog, even though Dimp hadn't been around for a few days. Yesterday, the cold had been bitter, the sky the color of metal. But today, though it was dank, there were rays of pale, mothy sunlight that Clay watched move across the scattered newspapers people had slept beneath, discarded garbage sacks, a mud-caked boot on its side under a bench, the grainy surface of the drinking fountain that no longer worked.

In the two weeks Clay had been living in the park, Buddy had found several things to improve their living arrangement—a crescent of hard plastic that now shielded the entrance of the crate, another piece of tarp to cover its west side, which took the brunt of the river wind, and a straight-backed chair in which Calvin was at present sitting, his feet in slippers that appeared to have been cut out of an old pink carpet.

There were a few people clustered at the counter of the van. Buddy had left on his daily round to find cans to redeem, saying it would be a good morning because of all he'd eaten at the Unitarian Church several blocks away, where he and Clay and Calvin had gone for Thanksgiving dinner. Wrapped tightly in plastic and hidden in the back of the crate was a paper dish full of leftover turkey parts, hard to chew but still pretty good.

“Is your life going to fit inside that notebook?” Clay asked.

“This is the eleventh notebook I've filled,” Calvin replied. “I'm up to age forty-seven.”

“You told me the story of your life when I first came, and it took you about three minutes,” Clay remarked.

“That was an outline. Each time you tell the story, there's more.… Any life is infinite. Imagine a single hour, all that happens in it.”

“But what if I'm reading, or just staring at something for an hour?” asked Clay.

“Do you think your brain leaves town? It's always working, with or without your permission. What you think and feel is as much of a story as the things that happen outside you.”

Clay didn't entirely understand what the old man was saying, but he was grateful to have a conversation with him, especially since Calvin wasn't, as he often was, talking about Clay going to the police and foster homes.

Sometimes the two men paid little attention to him, although he knew they had really taken him into their lives in the park.

But on some days, there had been moments, hours, when they barely spoke to him as they went about their housekeeping, or just sat silently with grim, faraway expressions on their faces. Then he knew that his being a child, a thing he'd never thought about much before, made no difference at all. He was alone as they were alone. He was just another person, ageless, in trouble, out of ordinary life, out of the time that ruled the lives of people hurrying past the park on their way to work or home.

“Do you know something, Clay?” Calvin's voice broke into his thoughts. “You need a haircut.”

He was a fine one to talk, Clay thought to himself. Birds could have built nests in his hair and beard.

“It's different for me,” said Calvin. “I'm an old tree. But you look merely ratty. Now, don't sulk.”

“I'm not,” Clay protested.

“Your face is sulking. Do something about it. Just let me trim your hair. I have a pair of scissors somewhere, dull, but they'll do.”

“But—what for?” asked Clay.

“To hold on to neatness, call it staying neat in a cyclone. Call it what you like. All of us, living as we must, disgust the people who bother to look at us. They blame us for the way we look and smell. They're scared of really poor people.”

“But poor people are scared of each other too,” Clay said, thinking about the hotel.

“That's true, but the reasons are different. As I was saying, people begin to think of us as nasty stains on the sidewalk, nasty things in their way.” He paused and looked up at the sky. “I think we'll have snow one of these days soon.” He went to the crate, leaned inside, and began to rummage in one of his sacks, from which he soon drew a small pair of scissors.

He came back to the chair, saying, “When I was young, you could make up a life … a little work here or there … keep yourself decent … even save a few dollars. If Robinson Crusoe was washed up on the shores of that island nowadays, he'd find a used car lot there, and before he could get a job sweeping the asphalt, he'd be asked for his papers, his degrees, and his work background.”

Clay sat down on the ground in front of Calvin. It was just as the old man had finished trimming the hair on his neck that Clay looked up and saw a patrol car, a flatbed truck, and a police emergency van draw up to the park entrance.

Gerald, wearing a sweater with a turtleneck that nearly covered his chin, was handing out the last cheese sandwich to a young woman with a head of wild, frizzy hair dyed purple. An enormous shawl covered her except for the pale hand that reached for the sandwich. Calvin's hand holding the scissors fell lightly on Clay's shoulder. Ten policemen and several men in work clothes walked determinedly toward the van. Gerald ran out from behind the counter to the rear and spread his arms wide. “No! Please!” he shouted.

“What's going to happen?” Clay asked urgently.

“Hush!” commanded Calvin.

Mrs. Crary, with a speed Clay would not have thought her capable of, gathered up her bundles and scuttled out into the street, followed by the young woman in the shawl, still chewing on her sandwich.

Ignoring Gerald, all the men lined up around the van, bent, and lifted it. Clay could hear them grunting with effort as they carried it out to the street, right past Gerald, where it was loaded onto the flatbed.

Gerald remained standing in the bare place where the van had stood on its rims. A policeman came up to him and handed him some papers and walked away.

The work crew and the police got into their vehicles. There was a clanging of gears, a revving of motors. Then they were gone. Gerald, looking dazed, made his way over to Calvin and Clay.

For a long moment, he and Calvin stared at each other.

“Why?” he uttered at last.

“The park is public property,” replied Calvin.

Gerald shook his head. “Why?” he repeated more softly. “Why aren't they ashamed? Why did they look like stones? Why isn't everyone ashamed?”

“They don't want to study shame,” Calvin said almost gently.

“Is this boy your grandson?” Gerald asked.

“Yes,” said Calvin at once.

“I'm coming back tomorrow. I'll carry the food with me. They can't stop me handing coffee and sandwiches out of a taxi, can they?”

“Not as long as you pay for it,” said Calvin.

Gerald hunched his shoulders and walked away from them out to the street.

“I said that—about your being my grandson—because Gerald would feel he had to do something about you. And I'm coming around to the view that Buddy and I ought to do it. The cold is coming, the real cold. There's a point you don't know about, a point where you won't want to go to school anymore, won't want any of the things you miss now. You will have learned the street and you won't want to give it up.”

“I can't yet,” Clay said, nearly crying. “She might still come back.”

“A few more days, then,” Calvin said sternly. “But you're not spending Christmas in this place. Nobody ever heard of it here.”

That day, when Clay returned to the hotel, there were more policemen, four of them carrying an elderly black man out of the lobby to the street. He was clutching an old down jacket to his chest like a shield.

“Now, Morgan,” said one of the policemen in a placating tone of voice. “You know you've been feeling bad, setting fire to your bed like that. We are here just to help you—”

“My name is Mr. Johnson, Morgan Johnson,” the black man shouted as he tried to twist away from restraining arms.

“Mr. Johnson,” said another policeman. “We have to take you to the hospital.”

“Call it the bin, you damned toy men!” Mr. Johnson cried as tears ran down his face.

Clay, pressing himself against the wall near the door that led to the stairs, saw them lift the old man into an ambulance that waited behind patrol cars, its lights flashing and circling. He went through the fire door and up the stairs. A thin girl, her head down, wearing a man's suit jacket over a dirty white skirt, passed him. “You gotta match? I gotta cigarette,” she muttered.

In the corridor, he stood for a moment by the exit door from the stairs. There was no plastic bag outside Mrs. Larkin's door. He could see it was ajar. She always locked the door. He tiptoed to it and listened. Nothing. He pushed it open. The room was empty except for the small stove.

They had gone. Where?

He walked into the room and looked at the place where the bed had been, where he had seen Jacob fall sideways and Mrs. Larkin had set him upright and patted his hair. There was a loud thump on the wall that separated him from his old room. A baby cried. A woman's voice called out, “I'm getting it ready—now simmer down, you kids!”

He leaned against the wall. People had moved in. His mother hadn't come back. He stayed there in the empty room for a long time. At last, he took his red crayon from his pocket and wrote
STOP
on the wall above the corner of the little stove. But nothing stopped as he felt the whole earth growing larger and larger with himself standing in the middle of it, motionless. He dropped the crayon on the floor.

Clay wandered the streets in the afternoon, no longer fearing he would attract the notice of a policeman. He'd seen an army of them that day. They hadn't given him a glance. How could he have ever imagined they were after him? Nobody was after him.

The days were so short. Night began early. A wind was blowing the cold air right to his bones. His corduroy jacket was dirty and ragged now. He put the collar up, but it didn't do much good. His head itched from the lice Calvin had explained to him people got from living outside, like the sores on his feet and ankles and wrists. “The lice need a home too,” Calvin had said in his sarcastic voice. And he had smiled sourly. “Little fellows looking for their place in the sun.”

Clay imagined that instead of returning to the park, he would walk to where the city ended. There would be country, and fields, a farm where someone would take him in and give him warm chocolate milk and a bath. That was what Calvin called “making a movie in your head.”

He was a truant. His mother was a runaway, and his father had disappeared. His own face would show up on a milk carton.

When he got back to the park, Buddy was there beside the crate talking to Calvin. Usually, Buddy smiled a welcome when he saw Clay, but not this time. He only stared at him as if he didn't know him.

“It was only a matter of time,” Calvin was saying, “until they took Gerald's van away. He knew it too. But he couldn't stand thinking about it.”

“He was just trying to do good,” Buddy said.